“For every creature of God is good.”

Under a federal law passed by Congress in 1942, the date for Thanksgiving in the United States varies from year to year. It’s the fourth Thursday of the month.

But the anniversary of the first official Thanksgiving set by federal decree in our country is November 26th.

In 1789, President George Washington issued a proclamation that made November 26, 1789 the first Thanksgiving Day designated as such by our national government.

As Thanksgiving Day approaches nowadays, I often think of one of our family dogs who died unexpectedly before Thanksgiving in 2009, from a genetic autoimmune problem that could not be fixed.

Her name was Boojie.

She was a beautiful, sweet-natured Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier.

My wife and I loved her dearly and her passing left a hole in our hearts that lasted a long time. (Since partially filled by another beautiful Wheaten Terrier we named Barbie Boo.)

I am not a religious person. But I do believe that we all can have feelings that might be called “spiritual” or “religious.”

The bonds I’ve had with dogs like Boojie and other animals come closest to giving me such feelings.

The word thanksgiving was popularized in English by the Bible, in which it is used many times. My favorite Bible verse using this word is in Timothy 4:4, which says (in the King James version):

       “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.”

On this November 26th, I dedicate my post and that quotation to Boojie.

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The genesis of “the Almighty Dollar” – from Genesis to Washington Irving...

The word almighty, used in connection with God, appears 57 times in the King James Version of the Bible.

Starting in the Book of Genesis, God is variously referred to as “the Almighty God,” “God Almighty” and, most often, simply as “the Almighty.”

The English idiom “the almighty dollar,” which is commonly used to mock the worship of wealth and money, does not come from the Bible.

It was coined in 1836 by the American author Washington Irving, whose best known works include the short stories “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”

There is an earlier, similar term. In 1616, the English playwright and poet Ben Jonson used the term “almighty gold” in his poem “Epistle to Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland.”

But the more familiar “almighty dollar” first appeared in a travel story Irving wrote about a steamboat trip he took through the Louisiana bayous.

The story, titled “The Creole Village,” was originally published in the November 12, 1836 issue of Knickerbocker Magazine.

Irving was impressed by the laid back lifestyle of the Creole people who lived in Louisiana’s bayou country and by how unconcerned they seemed (at least to him) about making or having money.

He wrote in his travel piece:

“The inhabitants, moreover, have none of that eagerness for gain and rage for improvement which keep our people continually on the move...In a word, the almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.”

Near the end of the piece, Irving opined:

“As we swept away from the shore, I cast back a wistful eye upon the moss-grown roofs and ancient elms of the village, and prayed that the inhabitants might long retain their happy ignorance, their absence of all enterprise and improvement, their respect for the fiddle, and their contempt for the almighty dollar.”

I suspect this romantic vision overestimated how content the locals were to be poor.

Of course, in 1855, when “The Creole Village” was included in a collection of his stories called Wolfert’s Roost, Irving made it clear that he had meant no offense — to the almighty dollar, that is.

In a satirical footnote in that book (later included in larger Irving anthologies like The Crayon Miscellany), Irving wrote:

“This phrase [the almighty dollar], used for the first time in this sketch, has since passed into current circulation, and by some has been questioned as savoring of irreverence. The author, therefore, owes it to his orthodoxy to declare that no irreverence was intended even to the dollar itself; which he is aware is daily becoming more and more an object of worship.”

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The Top 10 Quotes about and by US Marines…

November 10th is the official birthday of the United States Marines, which were established by the Second Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War, on November 10, 1775.

So, today, I’d like to salute the US Marine Corps by listing the 10 most famous quotations about and by Marines.

1. “From the Halls of Montezuma,
       To the Shores of Tripoli;
       We fight our country's battles
       On the land as on the sea; [changed to “In the air, on land, and sea” in 1942]
       First to fight for right and freedom
       And to keep our honor clean;
       We are proud to claim the title
       Of United States Marine.”
              Lyrics from “The Marines’ Hymn”
              Penned in the mid-1800s by an anonymous writer
              Copyrighted by the United States Marine Corps on August 19, 1891
              (All three verses and the history of the song are posted here.)

2. “Semper Fidelis” (“Always Faithful”) 
              Official motto of the US Marine Corps 
              Adopted in 1883. (Often shortened to “Semper fi!”)            

3. “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live for ever?” 
              Attributed to Marine Gunnery Sgt. Dan Daly 
              Comment to his men at the Battle of Belleau Wood, June 1918

4. “Retreat, hell! We just got here.” 
              Attributed to Marine Captain Lloyd S. Williams 
              Reply when a French colonel ordered him to have the US 5th Marine Division retreat at Belleau Wood on June 1, 1918.

5. “The Marines have landed, and the situation is well in hand.” 
              American journalist Richard Harding Davis 
              Cablegram announcing the Marines’ 1935 landing in Panama

6. “Gung ho.” 
              Motto adopted by Marine Lt. Col. Evans Fordyce Carlson and his “Raiders” 
              Popularized by articles about Carlson’s Raiders during World War II 
              In Chinese, the term means “work together”

7. “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
              U.S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (1885-1966) 
              Communiqué sent on March 16, 1945  
              Announcing and saluting the victory of the US Marines at Iwo Jima
              Engraved on the base of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery

8. “We're looking for a few good men.” 
              US Marines recruiting slogan  
              Created around 1970 by adman Warren Pfaff (1929-2004) 
              Based on the 1776 poster headline: “Looking for a few good men to serve as Marines.”

9. “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.”  
              A more recent Marine recruiting slogan, adopted around 2007  
              Voted into Madison Avenue’s Advertising Walk of Fame in 2007

10. “In space, no one can hear you scream – unless it’s the battle cry of the United States Marines!”
              Marine Sgt. Major Frank Bougus (played by R. Lee Ermey) 
              In the debut episode of the science fiction TV series Space: Above and Beyond (1995)

OK, that last one is not exactly a famous quote. But it’s a favorite of mine.

I’m a big fan of both the United States Marines and of Space: Above and Beyond, in which future Leathernecks fight to protect Earth from aliens.

If we ever do face a war with aliens, I expect US Marines will be there risking their lives for us on the front lines, as always.

Semper Fi!

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The bridge between the living and the dead . . .

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is the second novel by the great American writer Thornton Wilder (1897- 1975).

The first edition of the book was published by the Albert & Charles Boni company on November 3, 1927.

It’s set in Peru in the year 1714.

Early in the novel, on July 20, 1714, five people crossing an old bridge are killed when the bridge suddenly collapses.

A Franciscan monk named Brother Juniper happens to witness this tragedy. He wonders “Why did this happen to those five?” 

There must be some reason, he thinks:

If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.

Brother Juniper spends years compiling facts that might somehow answer his questions.

He talks to family members and friends of the victims, who came from various backgrounds and levels of society. He records what he learns and thinks in a series notebooks.

Ultimately, he spends six years “knocking at all the doors in Lima, asking thousands of questions,
filling scores of notebooks.” These are collected into one huge book.

The middle chapters of the novel tell us about the lives of the five people who were killed when the bridge collapsed.

They include:

     - Doña María, a wealthy noblewoman who is estranged from her daughter Clara;

     - Pepita a young woman who was raised in an orphanage run by the Abbess Madre María del Pilar and then essentially adopted by Doña María, partly to fill the void left when Clara left Peru and went to Spain;

     - Esteban, a young man haunted by the death of his twin brother Manuel;

     - "Uncle" Pio, the former manager of the famous actress Camila Perichole, whose career ended when she was disfigured by smallpox; and,

     - Jaime, Camila’s son, who was traveling with Pio because Camila asked him to take care of the boy.

In the final part of the novel, we learn that Brother Juniper’s book was brought to the attention of Catholic Church officials and they convicted him of heresy for seeming to question or try to justify the mysterious ways of God.

They burn the book – along with Brother Juniper.

In the final pages of the novel, we learn that Camila has come to Lima to help the Abbess take care of sick people at her convent. By coincidence, Doña María’s daughter Clara has come to visit the Abbess.

Clara looks around at the desperately poor and sick people there. Then she ponders the lives of the five who died when the Bridge of San Luis Rey collapsed. She thinks:

“Even now…almost no one remembers Esteban and Pepita, but myself. Camila alone remembers her Uncle Pio and her son; this woman, her mother. But soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love.”

Finally, Clara comes to an oft-quoted conclusion; the famous quote that is the last line of the novel:

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

As a snotty young high school kid in the 1960s, I wasn’t really moved by The Bridge of San Luis Rey or its famous quotation.

Today, as an older and hopefully wiser married man, father and grandfather, I am.

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